


murders of murderers living in fear of it

by agivise



Series: michigan [1]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Character Study, M/M, Pre-Canon, and alright, and kepler being The Worst, hell this is pre-maxwell era even, of Stupid Midwestern Scenery, this is just seven hundred consecutive words, this one definitely has some murder in it, while daniel wallows in his own apathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 04:18:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15502155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agivise/pseuds/agivise
Summary: on the fifteenth of january, 6:26 am, beside an abandoned lighthouse on the snowy coastline of upper michigan, you decide that he is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.





	murders of murderers living in fear of it

**Author's Note:**

> please forgive me i just needed an excuse to be a garbage disaster nerd about imagery and then i remembered the Thing I Said in my last fic and also hhh,,, kepler+snow,,,,, please,,  
> warnings for gore, blood, and uhhhhhh hhhhomicide whoops i wrote more murder sorry folks (but this time it's remorseless! that's rare for me! normally i'm obnoxiously sanctimonious for no apparent reason!)
> 
> today's song recs (i'm just gonna put a whole bunch because im in the Mood for it but do you guys even read these? i've gotten comments totaling in the low hundreds and not a single one has mentioned my song recs even in passing. i love y'all but listen to my music you fucking cowards): murders by miracle musical (which is where i got the title), i wonder where the moments go by jack conte, crane your neck by lady lamb, the shrine / an argument by fleet foxes, kinky lola by francobollo, and all for u by rjd2
> 
> p.s. my cAT JUST TOOK MY CHICKEN FROM MY PLATE :(((((

on the fifteenth of january, 6:26 am, beside an abandoned lighthouse on the snowy coastline of upper michigan, you decide that he is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.

this is not, nor has it ever been, a particularly difficult internal debate.

massive snowflakes catch the deep blue light of not-quite-dawn like little mirrors, and they come to rest on his shoulders, held proud and stiff as he stares away from the toss and turn of the dark lake behind you. at this particular moment in time, he looks more like a buzzard than a man, not in appearance, but in expression, eyes so dark and glaring, as piercing as the silhouette of his pitch black sniper rifle slung slightly crooked across his back — you admire the way it cuts his form in diagonal halves, a stark contrast to the precise, perfect posture which could only have been evangelized into his behaviour by one too many rasps across the knuckles with a ruler. flakes of ice catch in his hair and his eyelashes; he breathes out, hissing pale fog from his clenched jaw, a constant and surprising reminder that he is, indeed, as alive as any human, no matter how devil-sharp and stark white his teeth are, and how much his voice sounds like a siren song every time he says your name.

the muzzle of his sniper is still radiating heat into the unsettled air — and the shot, which he decided to leave unsilenced out of a pure lack of necessity for stealth after the fact, keeps ringing in your ears even minutes later, despite both your earmuffs and your preparedness. maybe it’s the otherwise corpselike silence hanging in the space between you that emphasizes the sound so vibrantly. maybe it’s just the full moon.

either way, he is absolutely and overwhelmingly enrapturing.

you hand him back his tar-black leather gloves at some point along the peaceful, quiet trek over to the bloodied carcass of the man he just killed. he nods gratefully and puts them on, stretching his fingers to call back the flow of warmth. his hands move like a guitarist’s. you try to recall if he’s ever mentioned playing any instruments in the short time you’ve known him. bass, maybe? or piano. piano sounds about right.

why did the two of you kill this man?

you can’t quite remember, really.

(after all, your job is to do as cutter says, not make step-by-step scintillating commentary on it —  and as new as this all is to you, you’ve very quickly learned you’re not a fan of reading briefing files.)

the point is, the top half of his skull is quite vaporized at this point, and kepler’s frowning that same way he frowned when you asked if you could turn on the car radio, as if a dead man scuffing his nice boots with a bit of brain matter is an approximately equivalent crime to you not wanting to sit and listen to him talk about a greenlandic cursed sapphire heist for eleven straight hours of driving.

most of the blood and grime of the carrion-man has frozen atop the rotting wood and flaking red paint of the cottage porch, all of which seems to unimpress kepler greatly as he wipes a smudge of gore off his shoe by dragging it through a fresh patch of snow.

he steps back, ignoring your pestering gaze, and begins to disassemble his rifle with great care; you take this as your cue to clean up the rest of the mess on your own. it takes about four minutes of dragging the body by its legs to reach the lakeshore, another two to sink it properly into the ice-slurried water, and a minute and a half to trudge back to kepler, by which point he has retrieved the case for his rifle and returned everything to its rightful place. they way he looks at you makes you feel like the last out-of-position cog in an otherwise perfectly functioning system. the way he rests his hand on your shoulder, though, that just makes your stomach swoop.

the air smells like nuclear winter, but he, he smells like ginger, and no amount of pilfering the travel shampoo and button up shirts from his suitcase will ever tell you why _._

\---

**Author's Note:**

> as always, thank you so much!!! comments and kudos keep me going :) they are like fuel to me.  
> also i normally don't say much in these end notes but have y'all ever seen this video? because i love it and i randomly remembered it while writing this note and broke down laughing please watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UlXcoVHnog


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